A Scalable, Wide-Angle Metasurface Array for Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting

Abstract

A metasurface array for electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesting for Wi-Fi bands is presented in this paper; the metasurface array consists of a metasurface unit, a rectifier, and a load resistor. Each row of unit cells in the array is interconnected to form an energy transfer channel, which enables the transfer and concentration of incident power. Furthermore, at the terminal of the channel, a single series diode rectifier circuit and a load resistor are integrated in a coplanar manner. It is used to rectify the energy in Wi-Fi bands and enables DC energy harvesting across the load. Finally, a 5 × 7 prototype of the metasurface array is fabricated and measured for the verification of the rationality of the design. Testing in an anechoic chamber shows that the prototype achieves a 72% RF-DC efficiency at 5.9 GHz when the available incident power is about 7 dBm.

Keywords

• ambient energy harvesting (AEH)
• metasurface absorber
• rectifier
• wide-angle incidence